The Darling Dahlias and the Eleven O'Clock Lady

Ophelia very much liked Corporal Andrews, though, and appreciated his informality—they were on a first-name basis—and his relaxed way of working. The corporal was well built, with crisp brown hair, pale blue eyes, and a flash of ironic humor in a face that could be as hard as a nut. He was quite good-looking, Ophelia thought. No wonder Lucy was interested in him—if she was. The corporal was a Yankee from the big city of Chicago, with a Yankee’s quick, staccato speech. But while he sometimes seemed secretly amused by Darling’s small-town ways, his pleasant friendliness made him easy to like. Ophelia especially appreciated his infectious laugh, which took some of the sting out of Sergeant Webb’s by-the-book style and his daily demand that they get the job done fast and get it done right.

Which wasn’t easy. Measured by the reams of paperwork that crossed their desks and flew on to the various offices in Washington, the quartermaster’s office was the busiest in the camp. It handled the arrangements for buying or leasing all the materials and supplies and equipment necessary to build and maintain the camp and carry out its mission. The office operated under a single cardinal rule, as it was spelled out by the sign on the office wall: BUY LOCAL.

As Sergeant Webb had explained to Ophelia and Corporal Andrews, although it wasn’t discussed much publically, one of the goals of the Civilian Conservation Corps program was to pump money into the economically crippled towns and villages around the camps. As much as possible, the camp’s supplies were supposed to be purchased locally. Orders that had to be filled outside the local area had to go through the office of the camp commandant, and Captain Campbell had made it clear that he didn’t want to see them.

But while buying local was proving to be an economic windfall for Cypress County, it could be a challenge. When Camp Briarwood was first established, everyone had lived in tents while the permanent buildings were built. This construction had required an enormous amount of milled lumber, which was hauled out to the camp from Ozzie Sherman’s sawmill and from three or four smaller sawmills elsewhere in the county. Musgrove’s Hardware and Mann’s Mercantile had supplied sacks of concrete, rolls of tar-paper roofing, and all the tools for clearing and construction—shovels and axes and hammers and saws and carpenters’ planes. To get all this material out to the camp, a new road had to be built, using mule teams and equipment rented or leased from local farmers and teamsters. Native stone and gravel was used where possible; where it wasn’t, Carruthers Gravel Pit had provided what was needed. For all this work, the supplies had to get where they were needed and get there fast, which was often hard to do, for the local merchants and suppliers were geared to a lower demand and a slower pace.

And that wasn’t the end of it. When the initial camp construction was finished, it was time to get started on the projects. The first was the new bridge over Pine Mill Creek and a couple of concrete bridges on the road that led to the camp. After that, they had built six new fire towers. There was talk of even bigger projects, like the dam on Pine Mill Creek, which could create a sixty-acre lake for fishing and boating. If that happened, they might build recreation facilities around the lake to attract tourists. All of this building required more materials—obtained locally wherever possible and paid for through the quartermaster’s office.